ADPIE
by Gray Glube
Summary: But the start of the game was solitary once, back in the very beginning, back when she was a nameless girl and he was playing to make his own mean something other than his actual identity. Sequel to "DABDA"


**Author: **grayglube

**Title: **ADPIE

**Summary: **But the start of the game was solitary once, back in the very beginning, back when she was a nameless girl and he was playing to make his own mean something other than his actual identity. Sequel to "DABDA"

**Rating: **M

**Warning(s)/Kink(s): **Language, sexual situations, dub-con, mentions of drug use, bloodplay, violence

**Disclaimer: **I don't own American Horror Story.

**A/N:** I started this fic not really knowing what would be in it or where it would go, I just started writing it and then I realized what I was writing. The sequel to DABDA. It's a sequel without the proof that it's a sequel, as in, you don't actually see the scene between that fic to this one, but why would you need to? You know what happens at the end of DABDA, actually that statement right there is an unintentional turn of phrase. Both this fic and its precursor are about the same thing really, acceptance and acknowledgement that even if you don't accept something it's still there and whether you do or don't does not matter, some things just are. For anyone who doesn't quite get the titles DABDA is the grieving process (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and ADPIE a scientific method of solving issues in a way that promotes some sort of healing (assessment, diagnosis, plan, implementation, evaluation)

* * *

><p><strong>I. <strong>

She studies her reflection carefully, stares at herself and smirks a little.

Despite the way he likes to watch her she's not quite doing it to entice him.

The door's closed and she's naked because she was in the shower and she only leans further over the sink to see how big her pupils are up close and watch the twitch of a snarl pull up her lip.

If he wants to amuse himself, or maybe it's supposed to be torture, and watch her it's his own fixation, and he can keep it to himself. She'll let him have that; any other response to it seems petty now.

Her chin lolls on the heel of her upraised palm and she looks down at her scars, the old, pale ladder of things that she barely remembers anymore.

She shifts and cradles her arm in her other hand and tries to remember the when and why of each one.

When she leans back and looks up his face is there too, behind her shoulder, leaning up against the closed door to the connecting room, arms crossed tightly over his chest, it makes his biceps bulge against the confines of his t-shirt's sleeves.

She wonders why. Wonders if he's come looking for an explanation that doesn't matter or a thank you that he doesn't really need to hear and she doesn't need to say because some things and actions are just expected, and don't classify as courtesies.

Maybe he just wants to see her naked again. It seems that way, but again it might just be an unintentional sort of variable to him showing up looking for answers or wanting to ask questions.

But he drags his stare down from hers and moves it over her skin, it's creepy and rude and immature, especially when he leers a little once he's finished.

She's doesn't say anything, doesn't even scowl like she should. She just disappears and ends up somewhere else in the house, fully dressed.

**. . .**

It doesn't quite bother him. The disappearing act. Her discomfiture about him looking at her so intimately. There's something taking the edge off, in fact the knowledge that she remembers just like he does how she mewled sweetly for him to do things to her she'd only ever imagined someone one day doing to her, never right then, right there, with hands and lips and fingers and a tongue and a dick, once upon a time in a kingdom far far away. Beside the sea. Pfft.

He knows she wishes she'd never been so weak to trade fierceness for temporary pleasure, for someone wanting her, before anything, _anyone_, else, her, first, last, every time, all the time, forever.

She went weak for an orgasm he'd always give her.

He's sure it doesn't seem like such an even trade now, to her, mostly because he has the image of her fragile limbs spread wide across the bed and the sound of her feeble little pleas retained someplace in his diseased brain synapses for instant call back, whenever he wants.

He has that much. In his mind he still gets to do whatever he wants to her, he gets to remember what he _has_ done to her.

It makes her seem so much more like the stupid girl she hates to be but is anyway sometimes. Because she is a stupid girl.

He's not any better by expecting her to stride over and press against him with the obvious intent to be fucked, but she's always brushed off his expectations of her. It's not surprising anymore, just disappointing.

**. . .**

Things have changed.

The year. As unimportant as all the others.

The dynamic. Different, but remarkably similar.

Her. Every move and every word is sparse and affected.

Him. Forgiveness seems trite and drab.

* * *

><p><strong>II.<strong>

'I love you,' he thinks it. He doesn't know if he'll ever say it again, now. He's too scared she won't ever say it to him again, scared if he does say it, sweetly, tenderly when he's inside of her that her eyes will go wide and stay open when she comes, that she'll slump back into the pillows and the bed and just smile her cruel little smile up at him like he's offered her his soul and is only then realizing she's going to eat it instead of keep it safe.

**. . .**

The missive that sends him away is pretty much useless if she doesn't mean it, and she never has, never has because when he's gone she's still stuck on him, the words don't blot him out of her thoughts. And if she just goes away instead of sending him away she doesn't have to even actually speak to him.

She can pretend he isn't the reason she flits from room to room, that she never even knew he was in the room she previously occupied. She can pretend he doesn't even exist if she wants and she's quite sure that the knowledge of her dismissing him without saying a single word to do it cuts him so much deeper.

'Go away' is a promise he made, one he keeps. She wants to pretend he's a liar and she wants him to know that sometimes his promises are inconveniences she doesn't have the time to bother with.

**. . .**

The lesson is in pyrrhic victories; the rare occasion when the war is not a simple zero-sum outcome or a shifting of critical assets and neither of them remember quite how the game started and who it was beginning it with a miniscule white pawn trekking in a solitary double space across the board.

Mostly because white moves first is why white usually wins.

But the start of the game was solitary once, back in the very beginning, back when she was a nameless girl and he was playing to make his own mean something other than his actual identity.

If there's only one person at the board, making all the moves then it simply equates to black moving first by making white's first move, if it's the same person playing both sides. And it was. White can still win, of course but at the cost of that solitary player's state of clarity and lack of confusion.

The lesson is that even when playing games with one's self it may not end in zero-sum.

* * *

><p><strong>III.<strong>

He knows just how sharp and brutal the cap on her back molar can be, knows that it makes her tongue sore after she rubs at it for awhile; it's a habit he knows.

He knows because it's bruised the base of his cock and left a pleasant pounding ache for days, afterwards making the memory of her hot mouth and eager tongue take up persistent and permanent space in his brain like so many bits and pieces of her speech and sounds and the shapes they make together while pressed in and up against each other already have.

**. . .**

She remembers the weight of his hands pressed up into hers, and that his fingertips taste like dust and salt, that he bites his cuticles bloody and his nails down to nubs.

She remembers how when they'd push against hers it was as if even though his fingers were between hers they might as well have been gripping her hips, he'd nudge her arms back, her spine would roll, her hips would rock and they'd be fucking but it felt like breathing, essential, vital, if they'd stop they'd die, that's what it was like.

**. . .**

The odds and ends of leftover, remembered touches, subtle sensation creeping up the spine; fingers, mouths, voices, skin, is as wanted as it is necessary, completely, but only in anguish, only in dread, and is only an exchange of one for the other.

* * *

><p><strong>IV.<strong>

She says his name like he's some cute little dog she can turn her attention to when convenient. He's no girl from one of Shakespeare's plays, he won't be her spaniel, he won't be her perfectly coiffed, trained little pet.

"What do you want?"

But he'll sit at her feet, half-feral for her, always.

**. . .**

He's glowering at her and she kind of likes the way the pout and glare look on him.

She smiles and burrows deeper into the blankets.

"I'm tired, but this is the only spare bed, someone may kill me for it."

He sighs and tells her to go to sleep. He tells her he'll stay and make sure no bothers her. She's happy and he's as surly looking as a rooftop gargoyle perched on the floor, standing vigil for the night.

**. . .**

The dead don't put much stock in dreams.

* * *

><p><strong>V. <strong>

She keeps the tail of her hat clenched in one small fist and her other hand flat on the top of it, holding it to her head while she slides up and down the floorboards with each thrust, like it's the only thing in the world keeping her steady.

There isn't an exchange of words until afterwards, when he's spilled hot and sticky inside of her and is slumped down on top of her chest and she's running her fingers through the sweat pooling in the dimples between the back of his hips.

"That was nice. You could have asked though."

"Are you…okay?"

"Yup."

"Are you angry?"

"No. But if you worry about if I'm going to get angry or not maybe you should ask first."

"You did want to, right?"

It seemed that way.

And she hadn't refused.

And she had been the one sitting naked in the middle of the library amidst shredded wallpaper torn off the walls from the new owners still littering the floor around her staring at the murals on the walls that he remembers his mother painting once, a lifetime and then some ago.

And she'd been the one stroking her clit with tender, careful fingers.

He just happened to walk by.

He's a little high and she's a little buzzed, but still.

And things happen, like they always seem to.

"Yes."

"You didn't come."

"That's okay. Drank too much, I can never come when I'm sloshed."

"I missed you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

**. . .**

When she finds him in the room days later he's looking at the walls, stoic and far away in his own thoughts.

He grins when he sees her and she lets him repay the favor from a few nights ago.

Her shoulders feel like they're bruising against the hardwood while he lifts her hips and raises her knees onto his shoulders staring between her legs like there's a riddle there instead girl parts.

While she's folded almost in half and he's lapping at her she doesn't really mind the rough scrape of the floor against her back because it's worth it.

**. . .**

There's a comfort in touch that can't be duplicated by words.

Nothing comes close to skin or blood or breath.

Nothing.

* * *

><p><strong>VI. <strong>

He lights her cigarette and watches her take thoughtful puffs before staring at the burning cylinder.

He wonders if she's tried putting it out on her skin yet.

He wouldn't be surprised.

**. . .**

She wonders what it'd be like to stab him in the eye with her lit cigarette.

She knows if she puts on the right expression and asks with the right tone he'd let her do it.

But that isn't the point.

**. . .**

Curiosity, cats, satisfaction, resurrection stories.

* * *

><p><strong>VII.<strong>

She drops the mug because he comes around the corner too fast and surprises her. They stare down at the pieces and the splashes of coffee on the floorboards and the walls and the red floor runner.

He mutters an apology and stoops down with her to pick up the pieces, noting how novel the situation really is to be happening in real life and not in a movie or on the pages of some book.

Her small hand curves around what's left of the mug's handle, a ragged ceramic shank and he knows what she's going to do with it before she even makes it obvious what she _wants _to do with it.

**. . . **

She leaves him after she's finished stabbing at him, not even really angry with him, just curious. She leaves him with a mess to clean up since it's his fault anyway.

**. . .**

They both know that there's nothing quite like the giddy thrill that comes from watching blood seep around the toes of their shoes.

* * *

><p><strong>VIII. <strong>

There are times when he forgets that there were two decades between his and her highschool years. The contrast in fashion is made even more bold by the fact that he's a boy and she's a girl.

He's seen the current fad of girls wearing stretch pants with words printed across their asses proclaiming 'Cute' or 'Juicy' or 'Pink' in neon letters, or the bad dye jobs of black and blond hair, and even the advances made to make bras so much more deceptive when it comes to the actual size of a girl's tits.

Suffice it to say he isn't an appreciative audience, for the most part.

He will admit to liking the tight tank tops that cling so desperately to every line and curve and rib ridge that it looks like spray painted skin.

He_ really _likes those.

She's not wearing a bra under the one she's got on currently.

It's the color of alliums, weeds that nature has made more appealing but not quite appealing enough to be really pretty at all because of their plainness, he thinks of their taste, watered down onion and how they are the consistency of milk-bogged rice cereal, oddly he can liken the gristle feel of them being chewed to scabs flaking off like eraser shavings.

It's a good color on her; it mitigates her paleness with its own delicate, washed out shade.

He blocks out the sun with his body and makes sure not to step on her hair as he looks down at her. When he kneels and takes her cheeks in his hands her eyelids un-scrunch from nervous tension and flutter up.

Her mouth is damp and pliant as he leans over her face and kisses her.

She maneuvers him over to her side with her hands on his elbows and then pulls at his body so he cages her in on his hands and knees over her body.

Then it's nothing but slow kisses and her chest rising up against his with every breath and the sun and the easy breeze of spring.

"Don't, it's not warm enough to be naked out here yet," she tells him when his hand starts skating under her shirt and smoothing over her bare stomach.

When he pulls back her face is rapturous, pink cheeks and glassy eyes, her chest is flushed and her breasts heave, nipples sharp looking and straining against her shirt, she sees him stare, "Pull it," she mumbles against the inside of his elbow.

He might have groaned a little and he definitely felt his dick twitch.

His hand curves over and he rubs at the hard little nub with a fingertip until she makes a sound of displeasure.

"With your teeth," she tells him.

And he knows he just groaned for real.

He mouths at her little tits hungrily through the fabric of her shirt, it makes his mouth dry but it's alright, the sounds she makes and the way she squirms makes it worth it.

She pulls the front of her shirt down and leave the straps trapped in the folds her elbows makes, he laves at her and leaves a hickey on the curved underside of one of her breasts. She presses up into his mouth and holds his hips between her thighs, bucking up.

"Do you want to go inside?" He mumbles against one spit slick nipple, giving it a tiny kiss before looking up at her face.

"No. Make me come."

He reaches down to tug at his belt; she digs nails into his wrist and pulls it back up to her chest.

"No, just get me off. Don't fuck around, not right now. Okay?"

He gets a leg between hers and she gnaws his shoulder like a happy cat while she comes riding his thigh. He kisses her when she's languid and boneless against the warm brick and cement, she indulges him for a moment and then tells him that she wants to be alone for awhile and fixes her clothes.

She closes her eyes and his mouth puckers in irritation at her casting him so easily aside, she tells him she'll find him later without opening her eyes and he grins at the prospect of the elusive 'later.'

He takes a half-hearted bath and smokes a cigarette, tapping ash off into the water.

When he loses patience with trying to kill time he lies down on the tiles to cool the heat sticking to his skin, it's only when he realizes he's dozing that lying naked on the bathroom floor is not the best way to be found sleeping by someone that he gets up and wraps a towel around his hips.

She comes in through the door while he's fussily toying with his hair in the mirror.

"Tate."

"Yeah?"

"Come here."

**. . .**

The lingering burnt musk scent of him could be melting her bones slowly for all she knows, for how quickly it relaxes her and eases out the tension in her spine. And suddenly she isn't as sheepish as she thought she would be.

He smells like a leather jacket worn by a heavy smoker, if it was, it would look good on her, maybe too big but effortlessly cool with the wide soldier cut of the shoulders and a color more warm and safe than the desperate black of something more hip and tough. She wants to swaddle herself in his scent, swallow it, borrow it for a little while, pretend she forgot she was wearing it and hand it back sheepishly later on, all while hoping he'll secretly let her hold on to it for a little while longer, despite nice weather or an already temperate climate, despite knowing she'd be okay without it, letting her keep it because he knows she wants it.

She preens against his naked thigh and licks a line up the side of his heavy cock, he's leaking already, and she tastes it when her tongue rolls across the tips of her fingers. He slides down the door and moves to sit.

"No."

"What?" His knees shake a little as he stops mid-crouch.

"Stand up; it hurts my neck if you aren't."

"Oh."

He straightens against the door and lays his hands flat beside his hips while she shifts in front and opens her mouth wide enough to take the head of him past her lips.

"Just, ugh…," his hands catch on her shoulder and in her hair, tugging for a brief moment.

She pulls back and looks up at him, the smirk catching on her mouth before she can stop it, "Did you-"

He pulls his hand out of her hair like he's been burned by it, "Sorry, just…yeah, sorry."

His expression is meek and nervous, like he's been caught doing something naughty, she takes his hand and puts it on the back of her neck.

"Pull my hair, Tate. Don't be so indecisive all the time."

His head falls back with a dull thump and he nods, tongue peeking out to wet his lips while her's curls around his cock slickly.

She's done this before, but only once and she's mindful of her teeth, trying to get him as far in as she can, she gags a little but it's alright she presses against the underside of him with her tongue and sucks hard when she pulls back, humming a little and moving her tongue around, cataloguing every pulsing vein.

"Can I?" He breathes.

She slides back to the weeping head and looks up at him, coy and seductive, trying to be sexy, trying to be the one that knows what they're doing for once, she tilts her head in a silent question and his chest heaves, "Can I come in your mouth?"

She lets him go with a soft wet pop and a quick lick to the tip, sampling pre-cum, and closes her eyes, laying a hand on the front of his thigh and wrapping the other around him before sliding it down to the base and leaning in close to his hip, arching up on her knees a little to tilt up and kiss his stomach, "Uh-huh. Yeah," she murmurs before looking up at him, "you can do that."

He squeaks when she drops back down and swallows him fast ignoring the way her jaw aches and her throat tries to push him out.

His fingers dig into her scalp and his hips rock up into her face when he finishes, she rises up when he's liquid bones and hard breaths, his eyes open into slits and she opens her mouth to let him see his release sitting on top of her tongue, he shivers and she swallows fast wiping her lips across the back of her hand.

"Say something nice to me," she coos after he's relaxed and plaint.

"Why?"

"Because I decided against spitting it in your face," she tells him.

He smiles a little, bewildered and kisses her, sucking any remaining flavor of his from her tongue telling her when he pulls back that, "There's nothing nice about you, Violet."

He's so matter of fact and serious with the words that her cheeks puff up and out in a wide stretching smile. And it is really the best compliment ever because he means it and he loves it just like he loves everything else about her.

He pouts like he's forgotten she hates normal things.

**. . .**

There's something deceptively sweet about children that makes it easy to forget that they are without empathy, something that one forgets about with age. Eternity turns age into a trinket, another toy for children to play with. And they've both become as limitless with their cruelty as they are with forgetfulness and forgiveness. Trinkets. Anything to pass the time.

* * *

><p><strong>IX. <strong>

He knows that she knows he's there.

**. . .**

"Well? Aren't you going to light it for me?"

**. . .**

And they're two people with secrets they won't share, about the other, in the same room, close but never closer, still too close. The secret is about forgiveness, or lack of it. The secret is about love, or lying about it. The secret isn't what matters. It's the proximity that counts, secrets against secrets and how little they matter against someone else's.

* * *

><p><strong>X. <strong>

He likes the way she looks when she does it. Her affected bland, bored looks that she's owned the patent on since before puberty aren't so contrived suddenly. But they aren't bland or bored either, they just look that way, they look similar.

He knows she's concentrating so, _so_, hard on the wet give of skin pulling open under her sharp little memento, the hot ache of the wound, itchy and sharp and sticking, as if it's caught on something and she hasn't cut deep enough to go straight through, passed all the grasping tissue and fibrous pink granulated scars.

The majority of her is somewhere far away focused on everything to do with the habitual motion, the cut, the blood but cataloguing it, savoring it, fixated on something that she doesn't really need to think about, feel any one way about, do anything about.

It's her version of watching a sunset or listening to birdsong.

Albeit more gruesome and a touch depraved.

"Got something to say?"

She strokes the red slickness of parted skin and frowns a little at it, but not for it. The frown is all for him. He shrugs and slumps more heavily against the doorframe, tapping the toe of his converse against the wood floor of the hallway outside the bathroom.

"You know you're dead now, so there's no reason for me to tell you not to."

"You got a thing for blood, then?" She's trying to find a reason for him standing and watching her, he knows. A reason more complicated than the one where he just really likes watching her.

"Depends on my mood," he settles for with another shrug.

"And who's bleeding," she comments.

"Yeah."

"Me too."

He looks up from the floor and everywhere else his eyes are avoiding hers to find her staring at him, sizing him up, and so very hungry looking.

"Where are they?"

He doesn't even pretend to not know exactly what she's talking about, not with the way she's staring at his chest, "I don't like walking around like a human cheese grater."

"Because they hurt?"

"At first," he admits, straightening and putting his hands in his pockets, trying to ground himself by pushing his fists down as hard as he can, "and then I bleed out and they don't hurt so much afterwards," he closes his eyes and smiles a little with a small shake of his head, amused that they haven't had this conversation until now, "everything feels sort of tight and heavy from the waist up."

He opens his eyes and she's got her teeth pressed into the middle of her bottom lip making the rest of it bulge seductively on either side of sharp enamel, they stick on her lip for a moment as her mouth parts again to speak, "Dead weight."

"Something like that," he tilts his head and nods, whimsical, assuaging.

She lights a cigarette and sits down with her back pressed against the tub, she's staring up at the ceiling letting smoke waft from her mouth when she asks, "What's it like to kill someone?"

"It makes you feel like you're the baddest thing around."

"I was going to; kill you, that one time," her head lolls against the lip of the tub, towards him, "Remember?"

"Best sex ever," he intones and her eyes widen and she's doing that thing with her teeth and her bottom lip again, "Really?"

"I came really hard," he promises, without deception.

"But I didn't."

"…"

She looks confused by what has to be irritation marring his face into some bitter twisted mask of hurt and anger.

"I didn't _kill _you," she clarifies mumbling something about coming that he doesn't quite catch and won't make her repeat because it's an annoyed mumble, not a shy one.

"Why not?"

"I don't know, it just felt anticlimactic."

"That's funny." He points out with a small smirk.

They've been talking long enough that the conversation can be more than idle chit chat brought on by passing by each other so he sits down next to her bath rug and smiles at her while she smokes.

"Yeah, sorry. I didn't mean for it to be a joke."

"Do you think about killing me?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you touch yourself?"

"Sometimes."

"Kill me then."

"I want to see them."

He measures her seriousness and after deciding it's not a joke he takes off his shirt and gets up to shut the door.

**. . .**

He grunts when the meandering of her fingertips across his chest ends and she feels out the inside track of old wounds. It feels different but not completely from when she's got her fingers pushed up into herself, the slickness is stickier but the inside of his body is just as hot as hers and his muscles move and hug her bones and she smirks, slotting two more fingers into two more of his death sentences.

The webbing between her fingers burns with the stretch because her hands are small and he hisses at the way the edges of the gruesome little keepsakes pull and tear a little and bleed all over her hand and wrist. She pulls back her hand and he sighs in relief leaning back to help remove her fingers. She's got a hand on his shoulder stilling him when she shoves them back in and he swallows a scream.

"I'm totally fingering your vital organs right now," she coos leaning up to mouth the sharp edges of his jaw.

He's panting when he glares at her and shoves her thighs apart to shove his hand down her tights and panties to find her hot and slick and desperate, "Fair's fair."

She moves her fingers in tandem with his.

"You look dead."

"Sorry."

He's bled all over her and the bathroom floor and himself and suddenly she wants him to fuck her in the mess of all of it.

"Can you…?" She stares down meaningfully between them but he frowns and shakes his head, "No, sorry, blood loss, not enough left to..." He's panting again, like he's going to pass out if she keeps making him talk, she nods in understanding.

"It's okay, this is good."

"Yeah?" He grins weakly and she smiles, "Yeah," she sighs.

"Stop being a tease, you _know_ you're not even really trying."

He rolls his eyes and his hand and fingers pump in and out with more than idle laziness.

**. . .**

It's time that's made everything perverse, corroded, everything about them. But not between them.

* * *

><p><strong>XI. <strong>

He likes the easiness of lying out in the sun with her, the drag of her fingers over his scalp, the way her belly concaves under his cheek with every breath.

Every so often he'll catch the scent of her arousal, leftover remnants from her fondling herself in an upstairs bedroom for lack of anything better to do than getting off.

"Guess what," he murmurs toying with the hem of her skirt.

"What?"

Her tone is sun sleepy and indulgent.

"One day…," he sing-songs, pausing to smile to himself a bit, knowing that she can't see it.

Her fingertips stop sliding over and through his curls.

"I'm going to eat you out until you cry. I'll hold you down if have to, and then finally I'll finger you, so while I'm sucking on your clit I'll be able to feel when you can't cum anymore."

He intones syrup slow and amused.

"Are you finished?" She asks dryly and he knows by her tone that at worst he's skeeved her with too much and too honest of an admission and at best bored her by how obvious it is.

"Yeah."

"Don't ever talk to me like that again."

She slides his head off the pillow of her body and brushes herself off before going inside, leaving him sprawled in the sun to languish morosely.

**. . .**

She leaves because it's the talk of 'one day' that makes her unbearably uncomfortable. Him acting as if there is a one day in their endless forever, the concept of all that time is frightening and the reminder of it provokes fear that's bone deep and nothing feels real when she thinks about it, she doesn't feel right, she can't, for awhile, recognize that she's a person thinking, alive as well as she can be already being dead.

Coupled with the bordering on disturbed, direct lewdness he always seems to favor more than just subtle sexual suggestion her stomach is roiling and there's nausea crawling up her throat.

She feels the overwhelming touch of oblivion and despite all the reasons she's content to keep existing all she wants is to not _be_.

**. . .**

The candle rocks above the abyss, illuminating nothing but itself in the scope of the depths below and surrounding.

* * *

><p><strong>XII. <strong>

"Where did you go?" He asks when he finally sees her again.

She's been gone for awhile.

Slowly she acknowledges his presence with words and tells him about Buddhist monks who would bury themselves and they'd have a tube for air and they'd ring a bell until they died of starvation. She tells him she learned it in an AP history class and that she can't really starve to death so she just sometimes goes down to a spot in the basement where there's an entombed recess, bricked over and hiding old evidence of forgotten murders, no doubt.

"Cask of Amontillado."

She gets the reference, he knows, despite choosing Lovecraft over Poe any day.

**. . .**

She thinks of it as putting herself away, inside her little cubby. The house's foundation and the brick wall are suffocatingly close and the fit of her body between them is snug.

There are times when she stays there for weeks.

**. . .**

The house is a presence with blood and breath the same as their own, as different as theirs when it comes to things that can still leave.

When she's gone all he has is the house, the idea alone is enough to make him tense and cringe and squirm.

When all she has is the house she feels, for awhile, like she understands, like she knows and it's easier to look and touch and love him when she's been alone for awhile.

* * *

><p><strong>XIII. <strong>

They play a game about lies, about the other ghosts, they stray far from sensitive topics, questions they really want to ask just to upset the other.

She wants to know so many things.

Things that will hurt her to know that she can't help from springing to mind.

She wants to ask if he enjoyed raping her mother, though she suspects the answer is 'lie' it may not be, she doubts it though.

She wants to know if he thinks she still loves him and the answer is of course 'truth' but then again she isn't quite sure enough that it really is or will stay that way.

She wants to know if being dead gets easier and knows he'll say 'truth' but that's a lie, a kind one, but a lie nonetheless.

**. . .**

"Then let's play something else," she sighs after getting up from the floor and falling into the couch, loose limbed and flopping gracelessly against the decorative pillows.

She calls him a baby in chastisement for not wanting to see what other things she's been waiting to ask him, things she keeps telling herself to forget to ask, things she'd disappear after having honest answers given for them.

He sits silent on the floor until he realizes she's waiting for him to choose a new game.

"Burning to death or drowning?" He asks fast, embarrassed that he'd been stuck in his own head for awhile and then even more mortified that the words come out in a jumble.

She smiles serenely and repositions herself on the couch, "Drowning. Sense of smell or sense of taste."

"Giving the other up?"

She nods and he moves his eyes along her legs, her sprawled posture, whatever outfit she's stolen from the drawers upstairs has an effect on parts of his anatomy and he wonders if it's something girl's really wear in public, it looks like something you're supposed to wear to bed and nowhere else.

"Yes."

"Smell, keep. Cards or scrabble?"

The soft pink color and loose fabric makes his tongue numb in his mouth, the crotch of the attached shorts gapes and he can just about see her own soft pink parts underneath.

"Cards," a sharp, malicious grin stretched her lips, "Me fucking your dad or me fucking your son?"

"That's not funny," he scowls.

"Wasn't trying to be."

"Neither."

"That's not how the game works."

"…"

"Does it bother you that I might want to?"

"Yes."

"What would you do to keep me from doing it?"

"Anything."

Her eyebrows jolt up and she shakes her head, "No, not anything."

"Anything," he affirms.

"Would you hurt me? To make sure I don't."

"…"

She smirks, "Not anything."

He looks away and shrugs, folding in on himself, "I don't know if I would, but that doesn't mean I couldn't."

"How long was I mush for brains?"

"Awhile."

"And…"

"And what?"

"Did you fuck me when I was like that?"

Her tone is full of smartass sass and he glowers, "No…,"

"No?"

Her surprise makes him sullen.

"I touched you, once or twice just to see if you'd get wet," he admits anyway.

"Did I?"

"No, not really. Used your hand to jerk off a lot."

"That's sweet."

She leans back and closes her eyes, turning her head and looking over at the wall, fingers trailing over the arm of the couch carefully.

"I haven't had sex with anyone but you."

"…," her eyes flint back to his and unbidden he thinks about how untrue the statement is.

"Don't even say it," he warns.

"I would hurt you, you know."

He knows she would but asks anyway, "Would you?"

"Uh-huh. Now that I've decided."

"Decided what?"

"To be more like you."

"Like me?"

"A monster."

"So that's what you think?"

"You don't?"

"I'm not, to you, I haven't been like that to you, not unless you asked me to be."

"I like you better that way, even if it does mean my dad is right for once. You are a psychopath and you are selfish but we're dead so what exactly does any of that mean, you know? "

"…"

"My mom told me that when you fall in love with someone you go a little crazy. I was already a little crazy; you just pushed me over a line."

"So you're okay?"

"Yeah. I'm _okay_."

"Are we okay?"

"I like you Tate, I just wish that sometimes you had more balls, I wish that sometimes you didn't care so much about the wrong things, things that mattered before."

"Before?"

"When you were alive."

"What do you mean?"

"Lost boys don't have mothers, _any_ mothers. Not shitty ones like Constance, not ones that forget about you like Nora."

"Oh."

"I just want you be mine."

"I just want to be yours. I was before. I am now."

"Then we're fine."

And he thinks that maybe they really are because she gestures for him to sit next to her. He's silent for a long time, mimicking her at the other end of the couch, taking up his visual exploration of her body again, "Is what you're wearing considered an actual outfit?"

She looks down at her choice of wardrobe and plucks at the collar sagging low on her chest, her nipples are little points underneath, and he wants them in his mouth again.

"It's a romper."

"It's a little too loose to not be wearing underwear under, just so you know."

She pouts and bends one knee, putting her other leg in his lap and giving him a good look at what exactly he's been trying to see.

"There's a reason it's called a _romp_er."

"Come here."

She shakes her head in the negative and he wraps long fingers around her ankle, pulling hard but halting the moment her expression blanches.

Fear.

He lets go and she regains herself, "Chickenshit," she hisses before sliding closing and lying down flat on the couch, her thighs on top of his, arching up her pelvis.

"I want to do it in an actual bed."

Even to him it seems like an inane and girlish thing to say, whiny even.

"Not today."

"Why not?"

"Doing it in a bed means more than doing it here and this isn't supposed to mean more."

He stops stroking her calf, her knee, her thigh, she doesn't even whine, not in a way that counts anyway.

"What _does _this mean?"

"That I want you to fuck me."

He grins despite himself and nods his head as if agreeing jauntily to something, "And what does it mean if we do it in a bed?"

"You _know_ what it means." He can hear the scowl edging into her tone.

"Yeah, guess I do."

It means making love, or just a broken fuck that fails to be anything more than just a fuck with two people desperately trying to make it more but not quite being honest enough or happy enough with each other to have it be more.

They've tried before to pretend but she's still pissed off and he's still bitter and they both know that for now the best they can do is hold the inevitable at bay for a little while longer. They both know when they get to that point of beds and professions of love there'll be tears again and the claustrophobic feel of too many wounds scabbing over at once and the itch that follows to pick at them until they bleed because breaking each other is fun, being horrible to other people is what they're both best at and they're still both growing up and they still have to learn to let go of all the bitter shit that keeps them from really being able to stand each other.

For now it's alright. He likes that she wants him, gets wet for him and she likes the way it feels when he's inside of her, how easy it is to not have it matter that she ever told him to go away.

"Can I tell you something?" She seems so small when she asks that he leans closer and strokes her hip to comfort her.

"Yeah, anything," he leans forward, his spine stretching with the angle and kisses the top of one thigh.

"Before, I was so angry at you. You made me so sad, you know? It was a lot easier to do this, just to prove something, I guess. I don't know. I feel like I know what I'm doing when I'm pissed off…or buzzed. It's easier to fuck you and get it all out of the way than it is to find some way to kill you again so I feel better for awhile."

"Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

"No."

"What is it then?"

"I feel like I still have no idea what I'm doing."

"What do you mean?"

"Just…when I, when I still thought I was alive it felt like…well it _was_ like I had no idea what to really do and then all the times after just felt different, it's all just like a different way to be angry at you."

"You don't want to then?"

"No, I do. I just don't, I don't know, want it to be like that anymore. I want it to be like when I was alive since we're both okay now, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"…" She's looking at the back of the couch with her hair hanging over the edge of the cushions, pensive and quiet.

"Do you want me to do something?"

"I don't even know what I like."

"I like everything you do."

"I know."

"Do you like this?"

He licks the top of her knee, just a tip of tongue and she makes a pleased sound and squirms against the couch, against his legs.

"Yeah, but…," she sucks in a breath and he licks firmer, down her thigh until she pushes his head away from her with her other foot, "Hey, not now. Not that."

"Okay."

She rises up on her elbows and pushes hair off her face, blushing and breathing harder than before, "Can I be on top?"

"You want to be on top?"

"Yeah, is that okay?" She chews strips off her lip and he nods, "Yeah."

She resituates herself on top of his lap and he presses his back against the arm of the couch. Her hands pull off his shirt and he undoes his belt.

Soon enough he's got his jeans and boxers down to his calves and she's stroking at his cock until it's weeping and his balls are tight and achy, heavy, and he's ready to cum right then in her hand.

She lets him go when he wraps a hand around her wrist; she unbuttons her one-piece apparel all the way down to the where the shorts begin.

"How, fuck, you gotta, move your le…-" he tries to get her to remove her legs.

"Just rip it," she groans as his knuckles buck up between her legs.

"Really?"

She nods and he relishes how drenched the fabric is, how slick it is against his fingers as he rips the shorts apart into shreds.

When she grasps for him and lines him up to sink down he watches and breaths in relief watching her body grasp at him, swallow every hot, hard, inch inside.

"I need…," she starts breathless, he kisses the corner of her mouth, "What? What do you need?" He purrs in her ear sucking a mark into her neck.

"Move a little," she growls.

"There," he answers after he shifts and she plants a foot on the floor and hefts her other leg over the arm of the couch, rocking forward.

"Help?" She asks when she finds she has no leverage to lift up, unsure of where to put her arms, "Here," he says reaching and throwing them over his shoulders.

"That's okay?"

"It's fine," he smirks a little that she's worried about putting some kind of strain on him, not that it matters, he'd suffer any kind of strain her chosen sexual position has the potential to put him in so long as she's all humid hot heat around him.

She braces her elbows on his shoulders and forces herself up, her breasts slide against his chest as she lowers her body.

He breathes in every exhale and whine that comes because of her clit dragging against his body as she moves up and down; her eyes are open and indistinct, glassy with want and feeling good. He stares back and rubs soothing circles into the tops of her thighs, kneads the soft swell of her ass in his palms, kisses her deep and slow, like the way she's fucking him.

Afterwards she puts her cheek on his chest and sits in his lap, small and sedate and he's happy.

**. . .**

Time makes things simple.

There's no value in complicated apologies or long goodbyes.

* * *

><p><strong>XIV.<strong>

"I love you, you know? But, I hate you too. And I think you're an idiot."

**. . .**

She walked backward, loose limbed and hypnotic, her hips tilting back and forth from side to side with her eyes on him shaded half scornful half sullen, it's heady for him, it makes his groin tighten like she's got a hand cupping him through his jeans.

She always has had him by the balls.

He takes a step, meaningless in the scope of how much distance her own gliding ones have made between them, and she spins around with her hair the wave and sway of an unfurled garment around her shoulders, there's a bounce of her body and she cocks her head to one shoulder, seeming to listen to something and then he never will know if she looked back over her shoulder at him because there's the loud crack of an aluminum baseball bat against a tree that redirects his gaze at the moment when she might have turned to look, but imagining he's missed it is a slight that carves just as deep as if it's the truth.

**. . .**

Caveats aren't quite rules. They are an exchange. They give equal weight to the victory or the defeat.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Okay so I guess I gotta actually work on one of my AU fics now, huh? Also, I just realized that I said in my notes for DABDA that I wouldn't write a sequel, well…I ate those words.

I know I've been a little slack with the gift fic forum; things have been a bit busy for me so I apologize for that. This month sometime when things get less hectic I'll be back in the saddle on that. Also I realize I haven't posted fic in awhile, that does not mean I haven't written any, my super secret exchange fic is finished and as soon as the fest concludes I will post it over here but until then it's all super secrety, but you'll like it I promise. And I've been tinkering with a whole load of other stories. Including a fic someone prompted me to do in a review on one of my stories.

Recs, lots of recs:

By **gimmedanger**: _"Beat the Devil's Tattoo"_ it's a wonderful fic though the beginning is much better than the end, not to say it does not deliver because it does but for me, at least, I could have done with it being spaced out better, it has a solid plot though it moves a little fast is my main critique, it's got drama and hot smut and it's AU with a Violet who didn't die when she took those pills, and _"Disappear Here" _definite growth in this author's writing with this fic, read carefully and slowly and take it in, it's a gem of a fic.

Top Pick: _"Disappear Here"_ by far my favorite and reaffirms my belief that this author really shines in their one-shots to a level that's hard to reach even for seasoned writers.

By **ohyellowbird**: _"Let The Right One In"_ which is a short vampire AU (yeah I know vampires, everyone's got an opinion on the vampire AU but trust me when I tell you if you like them you'll like this more than usual and if you don't like them then this will change your mind), and _"Snapshots"_ which is her drabble collection featuring her already established fic universes, and her collab with **ScarlettWoman710** "_The Curve Of Her Lips_" Tate's in his thirties, Violet's in her teens, not everyone's cup of tea but it's ohyellowbird and ScarlettWoman710 fucking _collabing_, you'd be nuts to not at least skim because it's be a lot like not watching a cage fight between Batman and Spiderman to see who wins.

Top Pick: _"Let The Right One In"_ I really like this one, it's just hits you and sticks in your brain as something unique and smart and wonderful.

By **ScarlettWoman710**: _"Band Aid Over the Bullet Wound"_ is her follow-up/companion piece to "Papercuts", it's Tate's perspective of the events is that fic, and unlike many version of the his-and-hers perspective stories there's not much reiteration, you get an altogether different set of events to see, which is a nice change of pace, and _"The Devil's Rejects" _which is an addition to mine and ohyellowbird's Devil's story-verse that is just bone melting in how hot and wrong and smutilicious it is, and _"Eight Rooms"_ which is her new "drabble series" though to me drabble seems like the wrong word it's more like a bunch of snippets strung together in the same universe, it's a series of one-shots would be a better way to classify that deal around people getting it on in the murder house

Top Pick: _"The Devil's Rejects"_ and not just because it's the fifth in me and ohyellowbird's Devil's series, but because it's delicious smut and weaves canon into this absolutely wild little series in one very important way that ScarlettWoman710came up with all on her own.

By **Gwen Bruyne**: _"Lick the Flame"_ kink fic at its best, and _"The Beckoning"_ the opening to this is the hottest thing I've read thus far in this fandom, good god this author has a way with words (and smut) that will make your bones melt, and _"School's Out Forever"_ tackles a period in the show that isn't being written much in fic yet that I was really excited to read more about (also hot like burning), and _"Sad Little Boy" _which is a collection of Tate perspective drabbles that _feel_ in character and believable as possible origin stories

Top Pick: _"The Beckoning"_ by far this one is my favorite, seriously the first scene just gets me every time I read it, it always feels like I'm reading it for the first time. Put this author on alert as they are a top writer in this fandom.

By **littlelindentree**: _sharpen up those dragging hooks_ byPut this author on alert. First off, I love love love long fics, I love long fics that make me feel like I've only read 1,000 words by the time I finish, this one is about 9,000 words and it's written in a way that doesn't drain you completely like some fics do, the plot is believable and will break your heart a little and make you sigh lovingly, if you can I suggest a glass of wine and some mood lighting with this one, and _Furnace Room Lullaby_ which is Violate AU, 1994, living Tate, living Violet, off to a great start.

Top Pick: "_sharpen up those dragging hooks" _I like fics like this, you feel good about feeling sad as you read, it delivers all the way through, it's wonderful.

_The Darkness Claims_ by **A Dirty Little Secret**: There's something about this one that I really liked reading, namely the effect the house has on who lives in it and how those things don't happen to everyone so someone ends up going it alone which is sad in itself, Violet's tired and lonely and Tate's there and that's what makes the difference, don't let me get you thinking the story is upbeat, because it's not, but it is well-written and lovely all the way through.

_Taboo_ by **hidingELSEWHERE**: It's a Leah fic, a well written one, a well written one that is angsty and melancholy and so so sad.

_Forget the Future_ by **whodreamedit** Tate and Violet on the beach in the way that's most realistic at this point in time considering the number of this type of fic out there, it's soft M, nothing too sexilicious, more sweet than anything but it's got that suggestive hotness that can be just as good as hardcore smut.

_Bang and Whimper_ by **neverfallawayy**: Such a clever use of literary device with the title, you'll see what I mean if you read, little things like that make a fic for me sometimes, it's quick and hits you like a punch in the gut. I liked this one.

_Tate's Conscience_ by **TheDevotchka**: Put this author on your alerts, really, I'll read anything she writes just based on this and her other in progress fic which I've rec'd before. You like fucked up, you like depraved, you like angst, you like sensual writing? Yeah, here it is. Go read.

_The Absence of Light_ by **Like A Dove**: It's an interesting take on the AU, probably the most alternate universe take on the alternate universe genre so to speak and there's a sense of doom even from the start since Tate is in 1994 and Violet is obviously a few decades in the now so it's interesting to say the least, I'm definitely interested to see where this WIP goes.

_i'm suffocating, help me breathe again_ by **OriginalLangdon:** A short little post-finale piece that I really enjoyed, it's this author's first AHS fic and it's a wonderful addition if you ask me, go read and offer your thoughts to a new writer in the fandom I sure they'd appreciate the feedback as it is well deserved.


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